The school uniform for public senior high school

I brought my daughter to get her school uniform for the public senior high school she will start in April. It was a very painless, almost pleasant experience. There was a choice of seven different stores where she could buy her school's uniform. I chose to bring her to Maruhiro for several different reasons, although it is notorious for being a little more expensive.

The main incentive for choosing Maruhiro is that they work on an appointment system. I knew that it would be a lot less time consuming having an appointment than not, so I felt it was worth the extra money. Especially as her friend, who is going to a different public high school, had spent THREE hours getting her school uniform on Friday at one of the (marginally) cheaper stores. There was no way I was putting myself through that! We were in and out in 47 minutes at Maruhiro.

I found it a very interesting experience too. Firstly, although Maruhiro have a school uniform section on the fourth floor of their store, you don't go there. For new students, they actually set up a temporary school uniform store in an entirely separate building, nearby. Our appointment was for between "2 and 4 pm". They take several different appointments in that time slot and then it is first come, first served - but by school. Maruhiro Department Store assign one or two members of their staff to look after the uniforms for one particular school, separated into boys and girls. There were at least ten schools being serviced that afternoon.

We arrived at 1.53 pm. We took a ticket number - #5 and sat in a waiting room. There was one other family also waiting and several came in bang on 2 pm. One of those families that came in after us, "#6",  was called before us, but that was because they were going to a different school and the attendant for that school was free, while ours was with another customer. I never saw the people with tickets #1 to #3, but presumably one of them is going to the same school as my daughter! 

We were brought into a large room with all the uniforms for each of the ten schools. Her school was in one section with two changing rooms beside it. But it was just us and our attendant at her uniform school section and the same for each of the sections. The attendant had a personalized print out list of all the items she was required to buy. She fitted my daughter for each and then wrote what quantity we wanted beside the item. She was very helpful and efficient. After we had finalized sizes and quantities, she gave us the printout and showed us the way to the "payment area".

The "payment area" was a large waiting room with a section like an office. Luckily there was only one other family waiting and we were called promptly to the 'office' section, where a staff member double checked our order with us. Then she gave us an invoice. We moved to the till where another lady took the cash! And we were almost done. She couldn't validate my parking ticket, so I had to go back to the reception area to get that done, which wasn't a problem at all, and we were on our merry way! I found it all very efficient and each of the (many) staff very attentive, helpful, reassuring and professional.